From what I've read, once a homeowner enters his address, it takes a while for it to be incorporated into a firmware update and eventually downloaded to user's devices. So it stands to reason that it would also take a while to get an address removed from firmware updates.
So, let's say I don't like drones AT ALL. I just don't like those damned things buzzing around all over the place at all. So I just enter the addresses of all of my neighbors... hell, everyone within a mile of me, whatever. Now those poor fools can't fly their drones in their own yards... and it'll take them months (?) to sort it out.
Seems like it has the potential to cause far more grief than it prevents.
Perl. When things get to messy for a spreadsheet, I whip up a little perl. Easier to repeat the calculations for different data sets, as a bonus. Access to much richer libraries, and you can shell out to GNUPlot, Ploticus, Asymptote, or whatever.
Or Python, if that's your cup of tea... or Ruby, even R... whatever scripting language floats your boat.
Seems to me, a simulation might lose its value if its occupants become aware that they are living in a simulation.
Perhaps this is a question best left unanswered?
Be sure to write it in perl, basic, or maybe logo... at least pseudocode:)
#!/usr/bin/perl
my $jane = Girl->new(age => 7); my $spot = Doggie::JackRusselTerrier->new();
$jane->see($s pot); $jane->see($spot->run);
Wow. I can't believe I just wrote that... must get out more...
The possible titles amuse me...
Junie B. Jones Determines that Cleaning Her Room is NP-Complete
The Little Finite State Automaton That Could
Goldilocks and the Three SysAdmins
The Monsters in My Code
OK, it's late. My apologies for subjecting you all to my incoherent rambling... mods, please mod me '-1 lame'
BTW, I tell my daughter that I write video games (I am a developer, but not a game developer) because, at 8, that is the only software that she can relate to.
ummmm....
I realize that this is supposed to be humorous... but...
To say that something is 'infinite' does not mean that it is 'everything'; e.g. an object of infinite volume does not necessarily occupy all of the space in the universe. In fact, an infinite universe can easily hold multiple (infinitely many, in fact) subspaces of infinite volume... think about it. So, to define a universe with a finite 'area' (i'm sure volume was what was intended, here), there can still be an 'inside' and an 'outside', thus there can still be imports and exports. Of course, the same argument holds for an area: an infinite area can easily hold many (infinitely many, even) infinite subareas.
I don't get it...
I have found wikipedia to be profoundly useful. I'm not exaggerating; I use it almost daily, and it has proven to be immensely valuable. One of the neat things about it is that most pages have a list of references at the bottom, where you can go to learn more and/or to verify the facts presented in the article. If the purpose for which you are using the information is that important and/or sensitive, wold you trust a single dead tree source either? Or would you get a supporting reference?
The quantity, quality, and accessibility of the information that wikipedia provides is, as far as I know, unmatched; and appears to me to be at least as good as any dead tree reference, on average.
It also serves to aggregate information that is not collected together elsewhere; For example, this information is generally hard to find all in one place (the only other source that I know of that has as good an aggregation of this info is this book, or perhaps, this one... published in 1998 and 2001, respectively).
Which brings me to another point: wikipedia is more likely to be up-to-date; if you buy a book on, say, complexity theory, right now, going forward (from its publication date) it will lack information on current research; which is why wikipedia is an excellent supplement to many dead tree works (esp. technical ones).
You're kidding, right?
Where have you been the last 10 years?
That is one of the things that M$ is (in)famous for...
'embrace and extend', and the general bastardization and proprietization (yeah, I made that word up... sue me:) of internet standards, all in the name of incompatibility.
For Microsoft, 'compete' != create a better product and/or sell it cheaper,
'compete' == drive everyone else out of business/out of the market, so that they are free to fuck the consumers to their heart's content By corrupting standards, they make non M$ products incabable of working smoothly with M$ products... and due to their market penetration, it gives the illusion that the incompability is due to the non-M$ software being crappy. They don't compete by improving their own products, they compete by sabotageing their competitors' products... the clearest, most blatant abuse of monopoly power I am aware of. That is why M$ is 'evil'... and so reviled, not because their products suck.
Microsoft is afraid to compete on merit, because they know that they cannot.
That is what the GNU/Linux 'movement' is all about... it will continue to erode M$ market share, it will continue to gain momentum, because it is a product of vastly superior quality. (it lacks some bells and whistles, sure, but that's not really the same thing now, is it?).
Free OSes, like GNU/Linux, (Free|Open|Net)BSD will continue to increase in popularity, if gradually, until (if ever) M$ accepts this, and focuses on product quality.
Now, I believe, and hope, that many of the other posters are correct; that M$ does NOT have the clout in the email market to pull this off... But the question was, do they Think that they can... You're damn right they do. That tactic has worked wonderfully for them in the past, why not now?
True.
The point is that such a device can be manufactured today in a much more compact form factor, at a much cheaper price.
People often overlook the fact that an item's price point directly affects its utility: I am fairly cautious with my $1200 digital camera, but I have a $200 one that I am not afraid to take where it may get dropped or wet... the financial consequences of it being destroyed/lost/stolen are much less ($1200 is an awful lot of money to me)
My brother and sister are both in college, and both have decent laptops. I am sure that they limit themselves, using good sense, as to where they take them. The device I proposed attains much of its utility by the very fact that it is cheap: the financial consequences of losing it are minimal. That cannot be said of the word processors of the 80s: they were not particularly cheap, nor particularly portable. (particularly when you compare an implementation of my imaginary device using one of those little folding Palm keyboards, or one of those rollup, or projected ones.
I am not a l33t hardware guy, or anything, but this gives me an idea for a product:
a device consisting of a keyboard, with a 1 line LCD Screen across the top (can even be segmented, like on a cheesy calculator), that allows you to type, and see what you are typing, and not much else... and which buffers your keystrokes into a couple of K of RAM, then writes it all out to a CF card (or flash card standard of your choice).
Maybe even skip the flash; just have a MB of RAM; that's it. the KB could have a regular old kb connector, and you can hit a special key sequence to dump the memory to the KB Port. (The software here would be SO simple... just increment a pointer on every keystroke, writing the scan code into the cell; decrement the ptr on backspace...
The point is, this could be manufactured REALLY cheap; and would be ideal for taking notes. You could even outfit it with the guts of one of these
to take snapshots of blackboards, etc.
It would seem like something like this could sell for < $50.. maybe even around $25 (given enough volume... keyboards are < $10 nowadays).
Even starving college kids could afford one.
I think you are failing to make an important distinction here:
Americans don't refuse to 'face' the 'reasons' for terrorism; we are aware of the motives in play.
But identifying a terrorist's motives is a completely different thing from identifying the reason for it... equating a terrorist's movtive with a 'reason' serves to legitimize it...
Now, I think our CINC has been, taken on the whole, mediocre. I don't plan to vote for him. However, I do completely support the actions he has taken against terrorism, and I completely support his position that some camel raping fuckwit in some cave in Afghanistan doesn't get to dictate foreign policy to the US. I do not think that that is a position that will alienate Muslims; if it is, fuck em. And as for Anyone who decides that the US's ties with Israel, and/or the US's Jewish population is sufficient reason to take arms against US citizens... fuck them, too.
It is exceedingly poor judgement to threaten a nation with the military capability of the US with terrorism.
If anything, our gubmint has been too restrained; As far as I am concerned, if a nation sponsors or supports or encourages, directly or indirectly (but knowingly) an act of terrorism against the US, an appropriate response would be to bomb that entire fucking country into gravel. Or glass, depending on your tastes. If retribution for acts of terrorism were swift, severe, and merciless, it would stop. No matter how fanatical, or devoted (depending on your point of view) these assholes are, there will come a point where either they will realize that they are fighting a way of attrition that they cannot possibly win, or those supporting them, or amongst whom they live will not be willing to risk helping them any longer.
The problem is our bleeding heart liberals that empathize more with Iraqis and Afghans than with those killed in acts of terrorism, and with our own soldiers. I am not for trading the lives of US Soldiers (or civilians, for that matter) for the lives of the civilians (or soldiers) of our enemies. Their safety is their governments responsibility; we will never defeat terrorists as long as we allow them to use civilians as shields. Terrorists, and their supporters, must be dealt with severely, brutally, and without remorse or hesitation, regardless of the cost. In the long run, I believe that that is the way to minimize the loss of life; seems unfair now, but if the lesson is taught that terrorist tactics will not work, but will bring hell to the practitioners' doorsteps, it will be a lot less attractive.
The only way to make terrorism stop is to push the perceived benefit vs. cost down as far as possible. This is accomplished by
a) decreasing the perceived benefit, by not allowing terrorism to affect US Policy, etc. (I think we do pretty good with that, now)
b) increasing the cost to a level that is unthinkable. If the consequences are severe enough, it won't be an effective tactic.
It is laughable that M$ is arrogant enough to market a security product, when they can't provide more than rudimentary security for their OS products. Are their actually people out there that would buy a security product from M$?? (I guess so... but it is like hiring a crack-whore to tutor your kids in math.
It is insulting, though, that M$ wants windoze users to buy yet another product, to reach a level of security that should come with their OS products out of the fucking box. Frankly, I think that it would go a long way towards their public image (at least with the tech/semi-tech crowd) if they included that firewall functionality in their base products.
Offering a security product like this, when their OS security is so infamously lax, is tantamount to saying "We did a half-assed job on our OS, 'cause we knew we could get you to drop more dime after the fact. Yup. That's right. We know how, we just didn't fucking bother. Ha Ha.".
However... take your comment, s/Nursing/Programming/g, and you have my opinion of the IT industry. (OK, there are a couple of other little tweaks, but materially, they are the same) It doesn't really sound any worse than what I am used to.
Much better, in fact, if I get to shitcan my pager:)
actually, I am a software engineer for a major online presence; my SO is a systems analyst for a major financial institution; we are both considering nursing for a career switch. (It pays well, is otherwise rewarding, and we have reached the "Fuck This" point with the IT Industry.)
(we both have CS Degrees, and years of experience)
I just went to the Dr a couple of weeks ago for this very problem. Turns out, my insomnia was being caused by a very serious medical problem. A medical problem that I didn't know about, and would have likely killed me (eventually) had it not been discovered.
"You might eventually even see completely automated robot trucks that go from central depot to depot. Local drivers would then deliver within the more complex city traffic. The same model currently feeds just about every metropolitan convenience center."
Where I live, this has already been implemented; in fact, it is quite common.
USB Wireless Security Lock, if it can tell the difference between Bob and Tom, for example, would be ideal, for starters.
You haven't really asked an answerable question, however, since you didn't tell us what the exact security requirements are.
e.g., just don't secure the damn thing would be a legitimate response in some circumstances (probably not this one, granted).
Identifying a suitable solution depends on determining just how 'secure' the system needs to be; there are different requirements for securing, say, gas pumps, ATMs, cash registers, nukular-missile-launcher consoles, pr0n viewing consoles, etc.... see my point? You are pretty clear that your users have a low tolerance for the barriers that security will put in place... but you don't clearly tell us how "high" those barriers need to be. Not to be pointed, but it kinda concerns me that you didn't, because it suggests that you, yourself don't know... and that is the very first thing you should determine
especially if this system could potentially have any of my personal/medical/financial information on it
Let's all of us in Seattle start one, then.
Seems most appropriate to start a general Math/Comp/Sci SIG (oxymoron?), then fork off if/as the group grows.
Anyone interested? If so, I'll start us a Google Group or something, we can work out the details.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly
He clearly didn't want anyone seeing his browser history, or porn stash ... respect.
From what I've read, once a homeowner enters his address, it takes a while for it to be incorporated into a firmware update and eventually downloaded to user's devices. So it stands to reason that it would also take a while to get an address removed from firmware updates. So, let's say I don't like drones AT ALL. I just don't like those damned things buzzing around all over the place at all. So I just enter the addresses of all of my neighbors ... hell, everyone within a mile of me, whatever. Now those poor fools can't fly their drones in their own yards ... and it'll take them months (?) to sort it out.
Seems like it has the potential to cause far more grief than it prevents.
Perl. When things get to messy for a spreadsheet, I whip up a little perl. Easier to repeat the calculations for different data sets, as a bonus. Access to much richer libraries, and you can shell out to GNUPlot, Ploticus, Asymptote, or whatever. Or Python, if that's your cup of tea ... or Ruby, even R ... whatever scripting language floats your boat.
Seems to me, a simulation might lose its value if its occupants become aware that they are living in a simulation. Perhaps this is a question best left unanswered?
I learned most of what I know about how the American government works from Tom Clancy and Martin Sheen.
:)
Sad, but true.
(come on, cut me some slack. I never claimed that I knew much
OMG. I need to get out more; :)
You REALLY need to get out more!
Wow. I can't believe I just wrote that
The possible titles amuse me
Junie B. Jones Determines that Cleaning Her Room is NP-Complete
The Little Finite State Automaton That Could
Goldilocks and the Three SysAdmins
The Monsters in My Code
OK, it's late. My apologies for subjecting you all to my incoherent rambling
BTW, I tell my daughter that I write video games (I am a developer, but not a game developer) because, at 8, that is the only software that she can relate to.
ummmm .... ... but ... ... think about it. So, to define a universe with a finite 'area' (i'm sure volume was what was intended, here), there can still be an 'inside' and an 'outside', thus there can still be imports and exports. Of course, the same argument holds for an area: an infinite area can easily hold many (infinitely many, even) infinite subareas.
I realize that this is supposed to be humorous
To say that something is 'infinite' does not mean that it is 'everything'; e.g. an object of infinite volume does not necessarily occupy all of the space in the universe. In fact, an infinite universe can easily hold multiple (infinitely many, in fact) subspaces of infinite volume
I don't get it ...
... published in 1998 and 2001, respectively).
I have found wikipedia to be profoundly useful. I'm not exaggerating; I use it almost daily, and it has proven to be immensely valuable. One of the neat things about it is that most pages have a list of references at the bottom, where you can go to learn more and/or to verify the facts presented in the article. If the purpose for which you are using the information is that important and/or sensitive, wold you trust a single dead tree source either? Or would you get a supporting reference?
The quantity, quality, and accessibility of the information that wikipedia provides is, as far as I know, unmatched; and appears to me to be at least as good as any dead tree reference, on average.
It also serves to aggregate information that is not collected together elsewhere; For example, this information is generally hard to find all in one place (the only other source that I know of that has as good an aggregation of this info is this book, or perhaps, this one
Which brings me to another point: wikipedia is more likely to be up-to-date; if you buy a book on, say, complexity theory, right now, going forward (from its publication date) it will lack information on current research; which is why wikipedia is an excellent supplement to many dead tree works (esp. technical ones).
You're kidding, right? ... ... sue me :) of internet standards, all in the name of incompatibility. ... and due to their market penetration, it gives the illusion that the incompability is due to the non-M$ software being crappy. They don't compete by improving their own products, they compete by sabotageing their competitors' products ... the clearest, most blatant abuse of monopoly power I am aware of. ... and so reviled, not because their products suck.
... it will continue to erode M$ market share, it will continue to gain momentum, because it is a product of vastly superior quality. (it lacks some bells and whistles, sure, but that's not really the same thing now, is it?).
... But the question was, do they Think that they can ... You're damn right they do. That tactic has worked wonderfully for them in the past, why not now?
Where have you been the last 10 years?
That is one of the things that M$ is (in)famous for
'embrace and extend', and the general bastardization and proprietization (yeah, I made that word up
For Microsoft, 'compete' != create a better product and/or sell it cheaper,
'compete' == drive everyone else out of business/out of the market, so that they are free to fuck the consumers to their heart's content
By corrupting standards, they make non M$ products incabable of working smoothly with M$ products
That is why M$ is 'evil'
Microsoft is afraid to compete on merit, because they know that they cannot.
That is what the GNU/Linux 'movement' is all about
Free OSes, like GNU/Linux, (Free|Open|Net)BSD will continue to increase in popularity, if gradually, until (if ever) M$ accepts this, and focuses on product quality.
Now, I believe, and hope, that many of the other posters are correct; that M$ does NOT have the clout in the email market to pull this off
Or Down
Prepare for the Revenge of the Trolls
True.
... the financial consequences of it being destroyed/lost/stolen are much less ($1200 is an awful lot of money to me)
The point is that such a device can be manufactured today in a much more compact form factor, at a much cheaper price.
People often overlook the fact that an item's price point directly affects its utility: I am fairly cautious with my $1200 digital camera, but I have a $200 one that I am not afraid to take where it may get dropped or wet
My brother and sister are both in college, and both have decent laptops. I am sure that they limit themselves, using good sense, as to where they take them. The device I proposed attains much of its utility by the very fact that it is cheap: the financial consequences of losing it are minimal. That cannot be said of the word processors of the 80s: they were not particularly cheap, nor particularly portable. (particularly when you compare an implementation of my imaginary device using one of those little folding Palm keyboards, or one of those rollup, or projected ones.
I am not a l33t hardware guy, or anything, but this gives me an idea for a product:
... and which buffers your keystrokes into a couple of K of RAM, then writes it all out to a CF card (or flash card standard of your choice).
... just increment a pointer on every keystroke, writing the scan code into the cell; decrement the ptr on backspace ...
.. maybe even around $25 (given enough volume ... keyboards are < $10 nowadays).
a device consisting of a keyboard, with a 1 line LCD Screen across the top (can even be segmented, like on a cheesy calculator), that allows you to type, and see what you are typing, and not much else
Maybe even skip the flash; just have a MB of RAM; that's it. the KB could have a regular old kb connector, and you can hit a special key sequence to dump the memory to the KB Port. (The software here would be SO simple
The point is, this could be manufactured REALLY cheap; and would be ideal for taking notes. You could even outfit it with the guts of one of these to take snapshots of blackboards, etc.
It would seem like something like this could sell for < $50
Even starving college kids could afford one.
Shit. I tried, and failed. Sorry.
I couldn't find "-1: Fucking Moron" either.
My bad.
I think you are failing to make an important distinction here: Americans don't refuse to 'face' the 'reasons' for terrorism; we are aware of the motives in play.
... equating a terrorist's movtive with a 'reason' serves to legitimize it ...
... fuck them, too.
But identifying a terrorist's motives is a completely different thing from identifying the reason for it
Now, I think our CINC has been, taken on the whole, mediocre. I don't plan to vote for him. However, I do completely support the actions he has taken against terrorism, and I completely support his position that some camel raping fuckwit in some cave in Afghanistan doesn't get to dictate foreign policy to the US. I do not think that that is a position that will alienate Muslims; if it is, fuck em. And as for Anyone who decides that the US's ties with Israel, and/or the US's Jewish population is sufficient reason to take arms against US citizens
It is exceedingly poor judgement to threaten a nation with the military capability of the US with terrorism.
If anything, our gubmint has been too restrained; As far as I am concerned, if a nation sponsors or supports or encourages, directly or indirectly (but knowingly) an act of terrorism against the US, an appropriate response would be to bomb that entire fucking country into gravel. Or glass, depending on your tastes. If retribution for acts of terrorism were swift, severe, and merciless, it would stop. No matter how fanatical, or devoted (depending on your point of view) these assholes are, there will come a point where either they will realize that they are fighting a way of attrition that they cannot possibly win, or those supporting them, or amongst whom they live will not be willing to risk helping them any longer.
The problem is our bleeding heart liberals that empathize more with Iraqis and Afghans than with those killed in acts of terrorism, and with our own soldiers. I am not for trading the lives of US Soldiers (or civilians, for that matter) for the lives of the civilians (or soldiers) of our enemies.
Their safety is their governments responsibility; we will never defeat terrorists as long as we allow them to use civilians as shields. Terrorists, and their supporters, must be dealt with severely, brutally, and without remorse or hesitation, regardless of the cost. In the long run, I believe that that is the way to minimize the loss of life; seems unfair now, but if the lesson is taught that terrorist tactics will not work, but will bring hell to the practitioners' doorsteps, it will be a lot less attractive.
The only way to make terrorism stop is to push the perceived benefit vs. cost down as far as possible. This is accomplished by
a) decreasing the perceived benefit, by not allowing terrorism to affect US Policy, etc. (I think we do pretty good with that, now)
b) increasing the cost to a level that is unthinkable. If the consequences are severe enough, it won't be an effective tactic.
Help me, I can't find "-1: fucking moron"
It is laughable that M$ is arrogant enough to market a security product, when they can't provide more than rudimentary security for their OS products. ... but it is like hiring a crack-whore to tutor your kids in math.
Are their actually people out there that would buy a security product from M$?? (I guess so
It is insulting, though, that M$ wants windoze users to buy yet another product, to reach a level of security that should come with their OS products out of the fucking box. Frankly, I think that it would go a long way towards their public image (at least with the tech/semi-tech crowd) if they included that firewall functionality in their base products.
Offering a security product like this, when their OS security is so infamously lax, is tantamount to saying "We did a half-assed job on our OS, 'cause we knew we could get you to drop more dime after the fact. Yup. That's right. We know how, we just didn't fucking bother. Ha Ha.".
Why, in the name of all that is holy, would you want to block wifi signals when the temp reaches 85 F? ...
"HotSpot" is a figure of speach, you know
I, for one, truly appreciate the frank advice.
... take your comment, s/Nursing/Programming/g, and you have my opinion of the IT industry. :)
However
(OK, there are a couple of other little tweaks, but materially, they are the same)
It doesn't really sound any worse than what I am used to.
Much better, in fact, if I get to shitcan my pager
actually, I am a software engineer for a major online presence; my SO is a systems analyst for a major financial institution; we are both considering nursing for a career switch. (It pays well, is otherwise rewarding, and we have reached the "Fuck This" point with the IT Industry.)
(we both have CS Degrees, and years of experience)
I just went to the Dr a couple of weeks ago for this very problem. Turns out, my insomnia was being caused by a very serious medical problem. A medical problem that I didn't know about, and would have likely killed me (eventually) had it not been discovered.
So my advice is, go see your Dr.
"You might eventually even see completely automated robot trucks that go from central depot to depot. Local drivers would then deliver within the more complex city traffic. The same model currently feeds just about every metropolitan convenience center."
...
Where I live, this has already been implemented; in fact, it is quite common.
We call it the TRAIN
It's virtually fully automated
USB Wireless Security Lock, if it can tell the difference between Bob and Tom, for example, would be ideal, for starters.
... see my point? You are pretty clear that your users have a low tolerance for the barriers that security will put in place ... but you don't clearly tell us how "high" those barriers need to be. Not to be pointed, but it kinda concerns me that you didn't, because it suggests that you, yourself don't know ... and that is the very first thing you should determine
You haven't really asked an answerable question, however, since you didn't tell us what the exact security requirements are.
e.g., just don't secure the damn thing would be a legitimate response in some circumstances (probably not this one, granted).
Identifying a suitable solution depends on determining just how 'secure' the system needs to be; there are different requirements for securing, say, gas pumps, ATMs, cash registers, nukular-missile-launcher consoles, pr0n viewing consoles, etc.
especially if this system could potentially have any of my personal/medical/financial information on it
Let's all of us in Seattle start one, then.
Seems most appropriate to start a general Math/Comp/Sci SIG (oxymoron?), then fork off if/as the group grows.
Anyone interested? If so, I'll start us a Google Group or something, we can work out the details.